Glance turns any watch into a smart watch

We’ve seen any number of smart watched in our time, most of which look like hi-tech devices rather than something fashionistas would want to wear. Toronto-based Kiwi Wearables looks at this as a business opportunity.

Owners of expensive Swiss watches won’t be giving up on their jewelry that easily and the Canadian company doesn’t want to convince them to do so. Instead, it wants to help them turn their existing watches into smart watches.

Called Glance, this tiny device fits under the band of any watch to receive notifications, count steps and even serve as a remote for a TV. Made out of curved aluminum, it fits against the contour of your wrist, working independent of your watch.

When paired with an iOS or Android smartphone, Glance will show when someone is calling, texting while also being able to display notifications such as sport scores and social network updates on its petite OLED screen. And if there’s more information to display, Glance will rely on Spritz technology to show long sentences word by word. For those uninitiated, Spritz also comes preloaded on Samsung’s Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo smart watches.

In addition, Kiwi Wearables’ gadget rocks a 3D motion sensor that is used to track your fitness activities and enable gesture based phone/tablet control. For instance, shaking your wrist can be set to open a web browser, and moving your hand in a circle could fire-up your favorite activity tracking app. Pretty cool, I would say. If you like the idea, you can secure your unit through Kiwi’s crowd-funding campaign in which they’re looking to raise $150,000 and have the product ready for shipment in October. Check it out from here.